Introduction; Chapter 1 Conundrums and Contexts; Chapter 2 The Just-So Stories about Female Infanticide; Chapter 3 The Tangled Tale of Twisting a Safety Net into a Noose; Chapter 4 Engineering a Masculine World; Chapter 5 Local Customs and the Economy Grow Mustaches; Chapter 6 Writing Lives, Underwriting Silences: Understanding Dowry Death in Contemporary India; Epilogue; Notes; References; Index
Summary
The Hindu custom of dowry has long been blamed for the murder of wives and female infants in India. In this highly provocative book, Veena Oldenburg argues that these killings are neither about dowry nor reflective of an Indian culture or caste system that encourages violence against women. Rather, such killings can be traced directly to the influences of the British colonial era. In the precolonial period, dowry was an institution managed by women, for women, to enable them to establish their status and have recourse in an emergency. As a consequence of the massive economic and societal uphea
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-255) and index
